Funcom surprises us all once again with another expansion in a short span of time making Anarchy Online one of the biggest MMORPGs available world-wide. Shadowlands released a little bit over a year ago was a great hit, full of content like new armor, weapons, dungeons, quest and gameplay options it was a great hit, however Funcom did not decide to rest and they worked very hard on what players wanted, and after a very long time of hard work they came up with just what their subscribers want, Alien Invasion.
Is Alien Invasion better than Shadowlands?
That was the question that came to my mind as soon as I found out about game, would Alien Invasion be better in content and additions than Shadowlands was and since Shadowlands was a great expansion this would be very hard to accomplish by the folks at Funcom. The day of the patch I realized though that both expansions are totally different however they add up to one great game. Shadowlands had too many things to do and immeasurable hours of gameplay to it while Alien Invasion is more of “content on demand” style, just like game director Marius Enge had said.
Alien Invasion is based on the players idea of “Towns of Rubika” that rised a long time ago at Funcoms discussion boards. Anarchy Online’s subscribers wanted to be able to make their own towns and hang out in them and finally it has been made possible however in a much more in depth way than it was expected. AO’s (Anarchy Online) story line is a Sci-Fi Futuristic kind of theme, and Shadowlands had added a lot to it and so does Alien Invasion. After players beat the final Shadowlands boss there were hints towards newcomers to the planet, although no one knew what was happening it soon come to common knowledge that Rubi-Ka would be invaded by Extra Terrestrial forces. It all came in one package, towns, aliens, new perks, new social clothing, new quests, new tradeskills, GUI enhancements, everything in Anarchy Online: Alien Invasion.
AO: Alien Invasion delivers new ways to spend time while connected to the world of Rubi-Ka. One of these ways is of course to slaughter the Alien forces that come to your cities but this isn’t so simple. Funcom keeps improving their AI system, Aliens are very smart nasty creatures that have each different abilities, they can run fast or hit hard and so on. They also have powerful Viral Technology which makes them very hard to kill “solo” and calls for team work. It is very interesting that the number of Aliens that spawn depend on the number of people on-line from the city. Their level also depends on this making it a very nice system. The more players present the more aliens will come. Funcoms AI system also enables their “content on demand” feature which allows organizations to spawn aliens when they want. This works by disabling the “cloaking device” and in 5 minutes you will have an attack on your land. So organizations are allowed to raid aliens whenever they want and feel secure with enough players on-line. The AI system also prohibits aliens to launch an attack when for example everyone is off-line or you barely got 1 to 2 people on-line (for small guilds). With the cloaking device you can get an attack every 2 hours which is very nice or if you don’t want to hear about aliens you can hide from them for an average of a week. It’s a very nice system for small and big organizations.
Organizations, what the?
Yep, the clan or guild system for Anarchy Online is what mostly benefits from this expansion since the alien attacks are targeted towards player created cities. Basically for a good city and alien defense you will need to be in a big guild with a lot of players in your level range, being unable to team with players’ higher level than you might leave you without any alienXP since high level players seem to be able to slaughter gray (low level) aliens. The other advantages of being in a big guild are the possibility to buy a big land lot and have many buildings constructed and all these buildings add up to nice advantages for everyone in the guild. Advantages include base abilites, run speed, nano-skills, swimming among others. However a big guild is much more benefited by AI small guilds, although struggling through AI they can also have some fun with the smaller land pieces. Funcom seems to have based the new prices on the Forum sales which are extremely expensive for a lot of players and can take a while to get that amount of money. So if your guild is small your better off buying a small lot and fit just certain kind of buildings in it, but you still can have some fun. The system had a few glitches but Funcom like always has promptly taken care of it and fixed in a few patches. They weren’t major bugs but just game play improvement. Since AI launch it has all been fixed and some are still scheduled to come up, players hope the promised City Market will become available since its one of the most anticipated features of the game that was cancelled due to a found bug prior to a few days from AIs launch date.
This screen shows a small org HQ
on a modified GUI (moved around.)Model: Qinuc
Inside the Alien Ships
Once an alien attack is started on your city it will at first be weak, however after the aliens find out the number of people you got they will send a second and much more powerful wave of aliens to target your city controller which has some special connection to “the source” which aliens want. As a player your job is to protect the city controller at all costs and you are allowed to receive outside help from other orgs or your guards that spawn from the guard houses the organization has built. Once you’ve gone through 20-40minutes of killing alien waves a general will spawn, he is always a quite nasty boss requiring a good team to get past him. After he has been defeated your allowed to board the aliens ship for a little revenge, revenge is always good isn’t it? The alien ship is just like a common dungeon, after you go down to the end of it you will find a final boss with very nice loot and after you defeat him you’ve beat the aliens and can wait until the next invasion. Getting in the alien ships is a very nice experience and a very nice addition to the expansion.
Alien Invasion is a success.
Alien Invasion is very impressive in content and looks. Like the previous versions of Anarchy Online all the graphics are stunning (check the screenshots out!) and very impressive. The game looks awesome in “low” detail mode and incredible in “high” detail mode. The GUI was also improved slightly and now feels more “complete”. The GUI also has new options like auto closing windows, having multiple open at a time and completely moving around parts of the GUI. It has a new tradeskill ability to see how many processes a item is used on which might help players find the hundreds of tradeskill processes that still remain a mystery since Beta times. AO is full of them and as soon as the game launched you had hundreds and hundreds of heads thinking together, exploring, killing, looting to find out how to make City HQs, this is very fun indeed and you can enjoy it too, just keep away from guides!
Basically Alien Invasion has given players most of the things that they wanted and with some more to come up with the following patches. Socializing in the game has been enhanced once more, with the addition of cities with bars and disco floors, park benches, trees, statutes and more. Let’s not forget all the new social clothes which range from sexy to funny looks and they are not so easy to get since you will have to do quests for them! Lets not forget the addition of the new 1 person vehicles which look very cool and speed up travel time by a lot.
The new maid outfit is one of the many new great looks. Model: Jadebabe
Alien Invasion is a success in the eyes of many players and will just get better as time goes on with all the tweaks Funcom is planning, however I’m afraid that if before you’ve kept away from joining a guild for whatever reason you had you will have to do it to enjoy Alien Invasion at 100%. There are very few things to do solo but it can be done.
Anarchy Online keeps getting bigger and better, expanding its “content in demand” style of play which makes it stand out among the other MMORPGs available. If you haven’t tried it yet I totally recommend doing so right now, however if you don’t have money to buy both expansions then start out with Shadowlands since Alien Invasion seems to be targeted towards the experienced and organization player. Have fun in a world that Funcom won’t stop making more and more fun!
